Mirela Spasova, a Reddit senior engineer on the Collectible Avatars project, took the main stage at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) event in Paris to shed light on Reddit’s strategy to onboard millions of users to its blockchain-backed digital collectibles.
In her presentation, Spasova said the primary motivation behind running Collectible Avatars on-chain is to give users freedom of use. Taking an on-chain approach gives users the ability to make their own choices, including the option to resell the avatars on popular non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces such as OpenSea.
This means that after purchasing avatars from creators on Reddit, users will be able to move on with the NFT ecosystem and potentially benefit from the growing digital collectibles market.
Screenshot of Mirela Spasova presenting at ETHcc. Source: Youtube.
In 2022, Reddit launched a blockchain-backed collection avatar with an NFT minted on Polygon. Spasova said the goal was to achieve widespread acceptance and support creators monetize their collections. To achieve this, Reddit has made user experience a priority, minimized friction, marketed the benefits of the product and delivered an integrated experience, she said.
To minimize friction between users, Reddit made strategic tradeoffs, including developing a non-custodial wallet, “Reddit Vault” for rapid onboarding within 30 seconds, as Spasova explained. They also introduced fiat purchases for web and IOS users. To improve the experience, she continued, Reddit made sure users received their collectible avatars immediately after claiming. They built an asynchronous system to query minted and transferred status, and update the collectible metadata once the NFT was minted.
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In the presentation, Spasova explained how they structured the messaging structure for interacting with new users, emphasizing the product’s benefits, value and overall user experience. In her words:
“You get a blockchain-backed collectible and no NFT offers all of that.”
Spasova concluded that the user experience strategies applied to Reddit Collectible Avatars led to the onboarding of more than eight million users into wallets. She also pointed out the positive side effects, such as fostering organic community engagement between artists and users within the ecosystem. In addition, users’ investment in building various tools on collectible avatars has enriched the overall experience for the community, she said.
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